Tone Glow 105: Gavin Bryars

An interview with the English composer about his hometown Goole, performing with his children, Brian Eno's Obscure label, and the longevity of "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet"

Gavin Bryars

Photo by Christian Palm

Gavin Bryars (b. 1943) is an English composer born in Goole, a port town in Yorkshire. His first musical reputation was as a jazz bassist working in the early ’60s with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. He abandoned improvisation in 1966, his distaste for the practice being laid out in Bailey’s Improvisation (1980). Afterwards he went to the United States, working alongside composers such as John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, John White. Some of Bryars’ most significant early works were published by Obscure, a record label started by Brian Eno that ran from 1975 to 1978. His most famous early works are The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971). Bryars has also composed prolifically for theater and dance, and has written five full-length operas along with countless other pieces throughout the past 50+ years of his career. Some of his compositions will be performed by the Phaedra Ensemble in a series of shows titled Gavin Bryars at 80: Stringworks, which will take place across the next few months. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Bryars on September 23rd, 2023 to discuss his hometown Goole, performing with his children, the Obscure label, and the longevity of his most renowned works.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day been Gavin?

Gavin Bryars: It’s been okay, a fairly normal day. I got up late, did some work, and got on with some things: a gentle Saturday. My football team that I watch, they’re away in a different city so I didn’t go to see them. In any case, they lost so I’m glad I didn’t go.

Which team?

Nottingham Forest.

Did you play football growing up?

I played when I was a kid. I had a chance to be a professional footballer when I was 18, but that was long before the high wages that people have now. It was a very low wage, and you were essentially the property of the club. It wasn’t glamorous like it is now, so I went to university instead.

What club asked you to play?

The cIub that was interested in me was the Doncaster Rovers, which is a town that’s not far from where I lived. I had friends that went on to play football and some had careers in it. Eventually I decided that professional sport was not something I wanted to go into. I was good at sports as a kid—I was a junior judo champion, but not at a high level because it was a small locality.

I actually just had an interview with an artist [Noah Lennox] where they were telling me about the similarities they felt about being an athlete and being a musician. Do you feel like there are any similarities for you?

Not really, I don’t see any relationship between the two. I also play cricket and I enjoy both sports. It’s a way of letting loose and I use language that I probably wouldn’t use in normal conversation when I’m with a crowd (laughter). It can get quite violent. Just really, really bad language. There’s also some funny things like the crowd chants. Nottingham Forest have a very strong crowd and they’re always singing and making jokes with the songs and everyone will join in and you’ll hear 30,000 people singing in unison.

Sporting events are some of the rare places where you’ll hear a massive group of people singing together, even with those who may not be invested in music. I’m wondering, now, if this is something that’s important to you given your upbringing with church choirs. There’s something about doing this thing together, of music being exalted in a communal space. Have any of these things shaped your thoughts on improvisation vs composed music, which has been noted at length in Derek Bailey’s Improvisation (1980)?

My feelings about improvisation have changed over the years. I had this big reaction at the time, having improvised for years with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. That was my life and it involved almost all my thinking and musical time. And then I had a quiet violence, an antagonistic reaction to it. I just stopped. I had friends who improvised and I was quite insulting to them. My next-door neighbor, in the next room to me, was Evan Parker who is a great improviser. We were good friends but I would insult him all the time.

Eventually it cooled down and when Derek did a later edition of the book, I did some afterthoughts and softened some things. And I have improvised since. I have played jazz. And while I normally wouldn’t do it by choice, I haven’t lost the ability to do it. When Derek, Tony, and I reformed, it had been two decades—we played in 1966 and then played again in 1998. I hadn’t played anything like that at all and I just stepped into it and we worked for a few months. It was not difficult for me. My heart and soul wasn’t into it, but I could do it. It’s like riding a bicycle or swimming—you don’t forget it. And when you do it regularly, you get better at it. I’ve also since played a little jazz duo with a saxophonist. I’ve done a little bit of jazz playing occasionally, I can do a walking bassline, I can do changes, and I can also play freely… but I prefer not to (laughter).

You were just talking about how you’re using violent language in these sports settings but then that you’d be nasty to people about these beliefs on improvisation. Are you the sort of person who’s firm in their beliefs and allows that firmness to guide their life? Do you think in absolutes?

I think the violence of football matches and the reaction against improvisation and jazz is uncharacteristic of my nature. I’m much more laidback and easygoing. I’m an accepting person, and not particularly confrontational. I’d rather deal with things with wit or irony—I’ll deflect it in that way. I’m very easy to get on with.

You’ve talked about your childhood in other interviews, but I’m curious about the sort of person your mother was. I know that she played the cello and was a Sunday school teacher. Can you shed some light on the sort of figure she was in your life?

She was extraordinary. My father died when I was nine, and it was me and my younger brother. I was the fourth child and my younger brother was the fifth, and the three elder children had left home. So essentially she had two boys to raise until they went to university some 9 or 10 years later, and that’s really hard. I would say she was a fundamentally good person. She had strong beliefs. For example, with children she insisted that Sunday was a special day and that we were not allowed to buy things—not a newspaper or an ice cream or anything like that. It was a quiet, respectful sort of day. That changed over the years but she was very strong-minded about it in the 1930s. She actually spoke up in the town square against the Sunday opening of cinemas.

She was strong but she also had an open mind. For example, she actually started the first child-planning clinic in this small town that I lived. They would give free advice for women and men about sexual things and so on. She organized it and while she wasn’t the counselor, she handled all that because she felt it was important. She had a strong sense of morality and duty. I remember every Thursday she would spend two hours reading to a blind lady. She felt that was what she should do. She had a funny sense of humor, too. It was 21 years after my father died that she remarried, so that was a long time. And then the second husband, he died and she was alone again, but she handled it very well.

With your father having passed away when you were nine, were there things that your mother was doing to ensure that you and your younger brother were processing and dealing with that tragedy in a healthy manner?

It was very different from now. My brother and myself were not allowed to go to the funeral—we went to stay with my grandparents, so in a way it was set to the side. She never really talked about it at all. There’s only one time when I startled her. I must have been 30 or so and I came back. I was wearing a black beret and I looked shockingly like my dad. I think I remember him even sleeping in a beret because he had a bald head and it kept his head warm, it was very funny (laughter). She was a support but I sort of became the older male in the family. That could be difficult initially, and I did sometimes react and do some crazy things in school and get myself in trouble, but that passed and she just kept a watchful eye on us, allowing us our independence.

You mentioned that she had a good sense of humor. Does anything stand out in terms of that?

I can’t remember specific things but she’d laugh a lot and she’d tell jokes. Her jokes certainly would’ve been clean jokes—not like mine. She was good-natured and very gregarious. She really looked out for the whole family, and this was a large family—her children had children. We used to have this annual thing after Christmas with my eldest sister. Everyone would go there—they live in a beautiful rural area in the hills in a big house—and we’d have 40 or 50 people. We’d have lunch and chat and she was a very strong person for the entire family. She was this matrician.

Do you have any memories of your father that you can share?

There are many things I remember but I can never be sure, having done all this research—when I did The Sinking of the Titanic, I talked to survivors and their memories were not right because what they said couldn’t have happened. Quite often, I remember things but it’s possible that I only remember it because I was told it by my brother or my uncles or something.  He was a practical man and he had a very strong sense of humor. He’d always make jokes in the streets and they’d giggle. He kept pigs and we’d always have a carcass hanging in the shed where we could get bacon or chops as they were needed.

There were some practical jokes he did. There’s one, which I think I remember but I may have been told about it. He sang in a church choir—he was a bass baritone. My uncle was the church organist and other members of the family were in the choir. My aunt—the organist’s wife—was a soprano and took all the solos. I remember there was a Mendelssohn anthem being sung. It was “Hear my prayer” which has “O for the Wings of a Dove,” which is a soprano solo. My memory is of sitting in the congregation, waiting for my aunt to sing the solo and she didn’t move. Apparently, my dad had bribed my aunt not to sing the solo and he sang it falsetto. My uncle was furious (laughter). He did that kind of thing. He was a character.

Thank you for sharing that. Do you feel like there’s any particular significance for you to grow up around animals? To have this carcass around? Did growing up around animals shape your life at all?

Not much, no. When I was born, we lived just outside the town, next to the river where we kept goats. The place was flooding several times and we’d have to move, but he kept these animals for food and not as pets. We did have a black labrador though.

Is there anything else you feel is important to mention about your childhood town of Goole? Do you think it affected the way you think about art?

More and more, it’s become apparent how important it is to me. I remember when I was working on a project with my writer friend Blake Morrison, we worked on The Stopping Train (2017). It was an installation on the railway train from Goole to Hull, which is a port near the sea. Goole itself is an inland port, you have seagoing ships coming up the river. He had never been to Goole and I showed him where I lived. As soon as he  saw the river, which is fast-flowing—it’s quite a powerful river—he said everything became clear to him. It’s a very flat landscape, no hills at all, and the ships come through. You look across the landscape and you’d see the upper part of a ship coming through in the distance. He said when he saw the river, he started to understand my work.

For a long time I would go back for family reasons, to see my brother and so on, back when my mother was alive. She died around 25 years ago. For about eight or nine years, I’ve gone back more and more and I now go more regularly. I actually go and see the football team there, which is a lower league. I watch them, I walk by the river, and spend some time there. I’ve done a few concerts there too. I’ve done a few pieces for the project that was set up by the people who did The Stopping Train. There was an organization called Sound UK and during the lockdown, they were getting about 10 composers to write about their region, and I did one about this area. It was sung by an amateur choir. I’ve done concerts there since. I’ve done string arrangements for a local rock band. It’s not an interesting place, nothing really happens, but people have this rather dry sense of humor, and I recognize it and can identify with it. When I go to a football match, I can identify with the people who are there, and I recognize them as being my people. At one point I thought about even buying a small place and going there periodically to work. It’s sort of like how people have a country and go out and spend a weekend. But I haven’t done it, and I’m not sure I will, but it’s an idea.

I’m glad you’ve been able to go more frequently. How do you feel like the city has changed over the years?

A lot of it hasn’t changed. The character of the people hasn’t changed. There are certain streets that haven’t changed at all and then there are those that have changed dramatically. The football ground hasn’t changed, the river hasn’t changed. The one thing that has changed is the docks. When I was a kid we used to play on the docks—you could wander across them. But now that it belongs to a national company, you can’t even go there at all. I used to be able to freely cross the docks and I would enjoy that because it’s drastic. And my brother, who was a sea captain, would sail from Hull. Originally he also sailed on very big ships, and he was eventually the captain for some very big liners.

Physically it’s changed quite a bit. For example, the docks today have become a kind of container port, it’s a different kind of shipping. It’s quieter and there are fewer people working there—it’s become automated. There isn’t a community of dockers. There was a shipyard I worked at on holidays, as an assistant riveter, and that shipyard is gone now. It was a crazy thing—and it wouldn’t be allowed today—but there was this scaffolding next to the guy who was driving rivets into the ship, and on the ground was a guy with a kind of furnace which was heating these red-hot rivets. He’d pick them up with tongs, I’d catch them in my left hand with an asbestos glove, and pass them to the next guy who’d drive them in. Health and Safety would not allow that today (laughter). It was a dangerous job.

I know you studied philosophy before you got into music, and I know you’ve made operas and works for theater and have also worked with dancers. Can you talk about the way philosophers have shaped your approach to composing?

At first, probably not at all. But more and more as I went on and set choral texts, I found that, having studied philosophy—even though I was a poor student, I graduated but…—I find philosophy to be of greater importance. A couple years ago I set some Wittgenstein fragments to a performance in Ireland about his time there. And some of the mystics like Thomas Traherne. I’m aware of the broader sense of the importance of philosophy and I’ve planned a chamber opera, which I haven’t managed yet, which would be based on the last days of Immanuel Kant. I’ll do that one day. Studying philosophy puts your mind in good shape, actually.

Regarding the operas, I know that Medea (1984) was your first. They’ve all touched on different characters, including Marilyn Monroe and Johannes Gutenberg. How do you feel like you’ve grown in your creation of operas?

All five of my operas have a central character, even though Doctor Ox’s Experiment (1998) is more about a town. I like writing opera but I’ve found that it’s very time-consuming and a very big thing to do. I’ve found that, more and more, it’s sort of redundant as an activity. You spend maybe two years writing an opera and have five performances. You maybe get 2000 or 3000 people coming each night, you might get a radio broadcast, you might even get it televised, but that’s it. My fourth opera was a chamber opera which meant it had a smaller audience but it also meant that it was more portable, I could do it on consecutive nights, I could do it in another town the next day because it didn’t require elaborate sets. So I’ve found chamber operas to be a lot more useful, and I enjoy the genre. I don’t actually like opera singers that much—I don’t like the sound that they make. For my second opera, I had some Early music singers.  I prefer the kind of intimacy you get with those Early-music voices. And in my fourth and fifth operas, in the first performances, there were singers who weren’t classically trained singers. For The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (2018), there’s a French rock singer who doesn’t read music.

When I was a teenager, I was really enamored with the Obscure label that Brian Eno ran. I was really into the releases you had on there. Of course there was The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) but I also loved Irma (1969), which felt like a precursor to some of the opera stuff you would be doing. And then there’s The Squirrel and the Ricketty-Racketty Bridge (1971) and 1, 2, 1-2-3-4 (1971). I know the latter was written for John White. Do you mind speaking about this period of your career? I’m especially interested in 1, 2, 1-2-3-4, which sounds cryptic in a particularly interesting way for the time.

I wrote 1, 2, 1-2-3-4 during this period when I was in America and working with Cage for a while. I became part of this English experimental music scene centered around Cornelius Cardew, but also other composers like John White. He was an older composer. He made good straightforward classical music but he was also a quite witty person who made interesting experimental things. Oddly enough, I’m performing 1, 2, 1-2-3-4 in a week’s time.

It is a very funny piece. I would create situations where there were things which you would never do in a normal piece of music. You would listen on headphones and not listen to each other; you would listen to other stuff and play with that. And with The Squirrel and the Ricketty-Racketty Bridge, that was for guitars but it’s two guitars for each player and they’re playing a flat down. And that was part of that experimental music world. It was a really interesting period during the mid-70s. Those albums that Brian Eno produced, they weren’t quite massively marketed and they were quite hard to find. Brian and I used to joke that we would call it “obscure” because they’d be hard to find, and when you do find it you’d treasure it. But of course, nobody would make any money (laughter). Interesting enough, all 10 are being reissued by an Italian company—they’re doing a box set in both vinyl and CD. That should be coming out fairly soon. Some of these have been rereleased separately but this is the first time the complete box set is being released.

I advised Brian, who I had known for a long time, and Michael Nyman did the same thing—we just fed him ideas. I introduced him to the work of Harold Budd and John Adams. It was entirely done through friendship and contacts, but it was really Brian’s choice. There were things I suggested that didn’t get recorded, but maybe if we carried on longer we might have. Brian originally wanted to do four a year, and we managed 10 in three years, but his career was taking off and he was with Bowie in Berlin so it just sort of disappeared. It did leave a bit of a legacy though.

What sort of things did you want to get recorded?

I introduced him to the work of James Tenney. There were also other West Coast people like Ingram Marshall and Daniel Lentz. I had spent some time on the West Coast and would bring back examples of their work. Barney Childs as well. If we had gone on for longer, that would’ve had a certain dynamic and direction and he would’ve selected more things. He would’ve done more things of mine, and maybe more things of Chris Hobbs or John White or Michael Nyman, and more things of his own too. That sort of community would’ve gone further if we went on for longer. And in a way, it had its day and that’s enough. We shouldn’t be too sentimental about it. It was what it was and we’ve moved on. Many people who encounter those things value them very much. It was not an obvious and easily available music; it had a special character.

After this period you made your first opera, but you were also making works for theater and works with dancers. You had Sidescraper (1980) and Sixteen (1981) with Christine Juffs. What interested you in working with dancers, of working in a different setting?

One of the things I did enjoy with opera—I was working with Robert Wilson, who was a big star—was the act of collaboration, of working with someone else and not on your own. That same thing happens with a choreographer. There are two people thinking about things. You can be drawn into a territory which you may not have thought of if you were just thinking of it on your own. It takes you away from self-obsession. You’re not in this ivory tower world that composers can easily inhabit. You’re taken out and, the fact that I also always played, meant that I put things in front of the public. I don’t hide behind the performers. Being a composer and a performer and a collaborator enriches everything.

Is it imperative that you’re in front of the audience? I’m thinking about what you’ve said about improvisation, about your distaste for personalizing any music. But if you’re there in front of an audience, aren’t people going to be making assumptions about who you are and how that relates to the music?

This is rather different from when I moved away from jazz. In this case, with my ensemble for example, I have a group of people who have been with me for many years. They’re like an extended family. My guitarist has been with me for 30 years, my bass clarinetist has been with me for almost 40 years, my viola player for 20 years. And now all four of my children play with me. So I have members of my actual family in addition to my musical family. It means there’s a sort of community there and that they’re committed to it. It means that by me being there for a performance, it authenticates it. It’s not that they go out and play my music; I’m there and I’m handling it all, but they’re also making decisions too. It’s real chamber music. It’s collective decision making. And they’ll see me make mistakes, and that’s part of it.

There are groups that do play my music now that I’m not connected with. There’s a group I’m performing with over the next couple months called Phaedra, and I’ll be at their concerts and will be taking part in a couple, but I’ve never met them. I’m meeting them for the first time on Sunday, October 1st. We’ll have a concert in London. So that happens, and I’ll also work with groups in other parts of the world and I’ll do something with them and so when I encounter them, it’s a new situation as well. It’s quite rare that I would write for someone and never meet that person. I don’t think that’s ever happened.

There have been times where I’ve written something but have not been involved in the process of putting the piece together. I recently wrote a harpsichord concerto for Mahan Esfahani and it was great. I knew Mahan and I knew the orchestra but fate came together when I was at the rehearsals a week or so before it. And similarly, there are times when I have a group of songs for voice and piano and the first performance was done where I hadn’t even met the pianist and the vocalist until the performance. So that’s something that can happen when a piece goes out into the world. Mozart is not there for all of his pieces. A piece goes out and it has its own life, but when the composer is alive, he will be involved with the piece during the early stages. I worked with choirs in the Baltic like the Latvian Radio Choir. I worked with them but they do things of mine without me now, and it’s because we have a rapport, we know how we think both musically and in other ways. A certain shorthand develops between us. It’s like when friends greet each other: You don’t need to spend a lot of time catching up because you’re on the same wavelength very quickly.

When did you first start having your children perform with you?

The very first time was with my two eldest daughters. I think it was when we recorded Sinking of the Titanic for Point in 1994. Part of the idea is that for the Titanic, there were women and children, and so having my two daughters and two of their friends playing a viola and three cellos would add poignancy. It’s like my own ensemble but the junior version of it. And that’s… oof, 30 years ago now. My oldest daughter is now 43, so that would be about right. Later, I got remarried and my third daughter is extremely good at piano. She studied in Russia for four years and Milan for two years and she lives in Italy now. She’s a brilliant pianist and my son plays bass and they all play with me right now. They were playing with me about 11 years ago when they were in their teens. A couple years ago I had an accident where I injured my elbow—I had a fracture. I couldn’t play bass for, they said, at least a year. The ensemble could still work but my son has taken over a lot of the bass playing in my group. This thing can evolve with my family of musicians.

Each instrument has its own personality, and I’m wondering what it’s like to play the piano versus the bass for you. I know you were drawn to the bass when you were younger.

For a long time, I didn’t write anything for the piano or for the bass because I felt what I would do was limited. There were things that pianists could do that I couldn’t do, there were things that extremely fine bass players could do that I couldn’t do. There was a limit. And the thing that broke it was when I was asked to write a piece for Charlie Haden. And of course I wrote the bass for Charlie, and his way of playing is very simple. I have played that piece many times. So, that broke the ice. Eventually I was asked to write a harpsichord piece which broke the ice there even though it wasn’t a piano. Then I was asked to write a piano concerto and I had to think about, not me, but the other person playing it. So now I’ve done more things for piano. But there’s always a danger of thinking about yourself playing it.

So what is the danger in writing something for yourself? What are you to make of an album like Hommages (1981)?

The problem is that it’s always gonna be too easy to play, it’s gonna all be relatively simple and static. And Hommages is exactly that. It has a richness and that’s part of its orchestration and the harmonic language, but in terms of the actual technique, I remember with my ensemble, I had two very fine virtuoso pianists with me and they could play this with one hand tied behind their back. I wrote more difficult things for them. That was me playing with my friends, the kind of things we couldn’t play easily together, and things changed a little bit. I recently started writing some Russian songs. It’s not something I would really play. I’ve looked at the nature of some accompaniments in Russian songs and have seen what is involved. There are some chordal voices that I wouldn’t use. I’m always consciously moving out of my safety zone to challenge myself.

This is what I like about your work, how you’re constantly finding new avenues for how your music can expand, even if you’re just sampling and making loops. I think about A Man in a Room, Gambling (1995), which involved working with the sculptor Juan Muñoz. I know that it was designed for radio. What is your relationship with listening to music for radio and how did that inform the making of that piece?

I was raised on radio. I was raised in an era when a lot of people didn’t have TV in their home, and I probably didn’t watch TV much until I was in my 30s. Radio was something I listened to a lot, including not just music but radio plays as well. They’re very rich things where radio becomes a very visual medium—you have to use your own imagination to create the world that they’re creating. With movies and television, things are just given to you, you just sit back.

With radio plays, your mind and imagination are engaged completely, and that’s why I enjoyed working with Juan. I have Canadian friends at CBC who worked with Glenn Gould, so I was familiar with his radiophonic pieces—the Solitude Trilogy (1967-1977), The Idea of North (1967), and those things. Radiophonic creation is an interesting thing. These are broadcasts and they can be heard in many different places at the same time. People can encounter them at home or in their car, at all different points. And even sometimes by accident. This is not conventional for listeners. So, for example, when I drive I will not spend a lot of time choosing. I’ll listen to the classical music channel on BBC and I’ll accept whatever comes out. Sometimes I’ll hear something completely surprising and that’s a pleasure.

What was a recent surprise for you?

Hmm… it wasn’t that recent but there was a program that was about the Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, whose work I didn’t know. He is a phenomenal jazz composer but it’s not improvised at all. It sounds like phenomenal jazz but it’s completely composed, very fast, and very difficult. It’s strongly thrilling music to listen to. When I first heard that I thought, “My God… what’s this?” I thought he was improvising but every note is written, and there are some virtuoso people who also play like that, like Marc-André Hamelin. And so I first encountered that on the radio and of course I got to know his music more and I’ve got some of his pieces and his recordings too.

I really appreciate the radio for this element of surprise. I talk with my high school students who are 15 or 16, and they’re listening to music on these streaming services and it often feels like there aren’t a lot of opportunities to be surprised with the algorithm.

Streaming and all that, you’re able to make choices there. But if you’re listening to a broadcast, someone else makes those choices, and you start to trust certain broadcasters, certain producers, certain programs, and you’ll know you’re likely to encounter something interesting. There’s a thing in England called Composer of the Week and for five days they go through, for an hour, a composer’s work. And sometimes it’s conventional, sometimes it’s a very old composer, sometimes it’s someone I’ve never heard of. Like, there are women composers from Eastern Europe. You encounter a lot of stuff that you’d otherwise not encounter, because how would you? These things are not marketed, they’re not sold, they’re not on Spotify. Someone has done research to unearth them. I trust that program.

Your process of composing is open to this idea of surprise too. I think about Vita Nova (1994) and how you were looking at Pico della Mirandola’s work, and then there’s also “Two Love Songs” from The Fifth Century (2016) where you’re looking through Petrarch’s sonnets. In both of these instances you’re really examining and working with these texts and looking for something new.

It was suggested I look at Petrarch when I was making Four Battiferri Madrigals (2011). I’m one of the few professional composers where I don’t do anything else. I don’t teach. I play but my income is entirely from commissions, royalties, and so on. So I respond to commissions, and sometimes a commission can be angled more to what I’m into. I’ve said that in an ideal world, I’d be writing vocal music, it’d be a cappella music, and it’d be set to Petrarch. That world of vocal music is what I really enjoy. Still, I do like a challenge. I’ll do a string sextet, a string quartet, and I’ve done different orchestral things. I do installations. I had this habit when I first started working to always say yes to every project, and then working out how on earth I could do it. I didn’t go to music college so I didn’t have the technique. That was my music education—I’d do things by putting myself on the line.

I understand that. I like putting myself in positions where I am forcing myself to grow.

Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and think, how the hell am I gonna do this? (laughter).

Were there any commissions where you just gave up and couldn’t follow through?

No, never. There are things where I’ve been asked to do something and it simply wasn’t possible. At the moment I’m revising some duets for an opera in December, and I have a harpsichord quintet to write. And there are other things. So if something else comes up, I have to work out how it can fit in—they have to have time to produce it, I have to have time to write it. I’m 80 now and people want to see if I’m alive and if I have all my teeth, so I have to go out and play (laughter). And I also need time to be at home to write. So things may not always be possible, but I always try my best. I got an email the other day from a percussionist in Portugal who was interested in me doing a marimba concerto for him. This was maybe 15 years ago. He came back quite recently and was wondering if it was still possible. My publisher looked at it and said it’d have to be between April and June. We can’t cram too much together because it just gets really confusing for me and difficult for those producing the materials, the scores, and so on. Now all I have to do is stay alive.

You said in an ideal world you’d be working with vocal music. What about it is so meaningful to you?

With the production of musical sound, people have phenomenal abilities. But the difference between the voice and any other instrument is that the voice and the person are the same thing. You can play a cello but it’s something outside you. It’s an extension of you. So in a way, you’re doing something much more fragile with your voice. I’m very conscious about what I’m asking performers to do. In the early days, when I had little experience with working with top professionals, I always listened to them, things they said about what I’d done. And it's because they knew more than me about the craft. And little by little I developed a craft that responds to their needs and what feels good for them.

I could write a vocal phrase that was incredibly awkward. Then I could write a vocal phrase that has exactly the same musical effect and artistic expression and make it not feel awkward for the voice—then the singer wouldn’t be struggling. Similarly, if there’s string writing and the hand is in an awkward position, I can write it so it can be more comfortable. They know that I’m writing for them, they know that I’m on their wavelength, and I’m still doing something that’s still idiomatically good for them. With the voice, this is even more so because when they’re singing, they’re in front of an audience and they can’t hide behind an instrument. You can’t say something’s wrong with your piano or your marimba mallets. No, the voice is the person.

There are composers who can be quite arrogant. In the past you had, with Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, it didn’t matter if this performer needed a 6th finger. He could be quite crude about it. And there are composers who write something that’s incredibly difficult, where what they like is a sense of difficulty in the execution of their pieces. That’s one point of view, but it’s not one which I enjoy or find particularly useful. It’s like pushing someone to the limit—that’s more of an athletic thing, and this isn’t gymnastics.

You told me that you constantly put yourself on the line. Are there any compositions that you made that were particularly challenging, that felt like a breakthrough when you completed them?

Well, when a piece is finished, I almost never go back and revisit it. I’d rather just write something else. What I’m doing now with this duet, I am rewriting some of that because it has now been 25 years since it’s been done, and it was only done once. So I’m rethinking that a little bit. And with Medea, I rewrote part of the beginning because I didn’t think the theatrical version was good, and that was because of the staging. I was obliged to follow the staging, but with a concert performance I don’t have that. But generally, I leave things as they are. During a performance, we may change things, tempos might change, we may repeat some things, we may extend some things, but after a performance, that’s usually it.

With the upcoming performances by the Phaedra Ensemble, these are marketed as being a celebration of your 80th birthday. They’re playing a lot of your older pieces.

They’re playing 1, 2, 1-2-3-4, they’re playing The Sinking of the Titanic as a string quartet. They are doing the full string quartet, which is quite recent. One place is playing A Man in a Room Gambling. I’ll be at the concert on the first of October and then I’m together with them in December, but they have other concerts in the autumn where I won’t be with them. I don’t know them at all. I’ve been in contact with them and my publisher has worked with them in terms of providing the material, and they’ve gone to the performances. They’ve told me it’s good to have another group perform my pieces and not only my ensemble, and they’re right. My exchanges with them have all been very good though and I’m looking forward to the first time we meet.

I was thinking of The Sinking of the Titanic and was thinking about what you said earlier about memory. Revisiting it again recently, I was reminded of the films of Terence Davies. Are you familiar with him?

No, what has he made?

His most famous films are Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992). He’s also from the UK and is 77. His films deal a lot with memory. But more to this point, your two most widely known pieces, Titanic and Jesus’ Blood, have been performed repeatedly in the decades since you made them. What has it been like to see these continually performed? What has changed?

These pieces have had their own life. They’ve had a certain impact, and in different ways. They’ve had a powerful effect on many people, and often in quite personal circumstances. It’s a delicate matter. There was a time when I was asked to do Jesus’ Blood after I hadn’t done it in a while. I felt like I was in the Rolling Stones and asked to do “Satisfaction.” They said, “Well, that may be true, but the people you’re playing for have never seen this. It’s new for them.” I couldn’t do it in a casual way—I had to treat it seriously. What I’ve found over the years is that, certainly with Jesus’ Blood, when we’re performing that and the voice starts to fade in, I’m still touched by it. I’ve heard that loop so many times, and I still hear things in that voice that I haven’t heard before. It has the advantage of being a kind of recording with a little bit of street noise in the back. And his voice isn’t accurate in terms of the rhythm, though it is in terms of pitch. And when we play the first string accompaniment, you get a shiver. As it goes on, the thing becomes more and more engaging. If anything, it’s gotten more engaging over the years. I don’t tire of that piece at all.

I know that when we made the version on Point with Tom Waits, Michael Riesman was the producer of that and he calculated that between the time we had been working on that in New York, I heard that 26-second loop like 14,000 times. So if I had done that in a few months in 1993, how many times have I heard that since 1971? It’s probably been over a million. And yet, it’s still fresh and I feel a responsibility to elevate the qualities I hear in that voice. Sometimes I do it with an orchestra, sometimes I do it with instruments I haven’t used before. In December, at this concert at the Barbican, I’ll have a harpsichord in there. And sometimes there are some churches where my son will play a cathedral organ. It takes on a new dimension. Equally, I’ve done some small versions with just four players, and it can be quite austere but it doesn’t matter—we’re still doing the same thing. We’re still enhancing and responding to the old man’s voice, we’re supporting it. There’s no time to overpower it or draw attention to myself for how clever I am. The attention is always on him and his voice, and everything I do is to enhance the quality of what I hear there.

Is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn’t get to?

I can go on talking forever. I can talk the hind legs off a donkey, so don’t tempt me (laughter).

I used to play Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood when I was a teenager. I would play them when my parents asked me to massage them. It was meant to be therapeutic music for them, but really we had this deal where I’d only massage them if I got to play what I liked. I remember them thinking it was strange, like, “Oh, you have to be a really special person to enjoy this.”

It’s like you’re massaging them and giving them pain (laughter). 15 years ago or so, I was doing some concerts with the Estonian National Male Choir and we were recording in Tallinn. Arvo Pärt is an old friend of mine, and he couldn’t come to the concert but he came to the rehearsal. One of the pieces we were doing was Cadman Requiem (2006) and in the second movement, there’s a solo for a tenor voice. The conductor had chosen it from within the choir, and this tenor had a slightly unpleasant voice. It had character. So the voice started and Arvo frowned a little bit. He turned to me and said, “Ahh, Gavin. This is a requiem—we should feel pain, yes?” (laughter).

There’s a question I end all my interviews with that I wanted to ask you: Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

That I love about myself? I’m very self-deprecating. I have no ego. I love this about myself: When I do a new piece with my ensemble, for example, I just think “oh no this is rubbish.” And then they reassure me saying, “No no, go on, it’s great.” And then we play more and I realize it is okay. I don’t think I’m a great man or a great composer—quite the opposite. Sometimes people will have to drag it out of me. There was a TV comedy program called Spitting Image where they have these puppets and one of them was of Andrew Lloyd Webber looking into a mirror saying, “I am a great composer, I am a great composer.” (laughter). I would never dream of doing that.

I’m someone who doesn’t move around a lot. I’ve lived in this house for 31 years. It’s from the 1720s and in a small village. I travel around a lot but my base is quite solid, it’s quite traditional. I’m in a small rural environment, either here or on Vancouver Island where I spend part of the year. I enjoy cities but for life, I enjoy the quiet respect and the quiet life around here. There’s nothing really I love about myself. The one thing I suppose I admire about myself, but I don’t necessarily do it consciously, is that I’m extremely loyal. I’m loyal to my musicians and my friends. I spend a lot of time making sure the people I work with are the people I want to work with. My best quality is my loyalty… and of course my good looks (laughter).

More information about Gavin Bryars can be found at his website. The Phaedra Ensemble is performing a series of shows titled Gavin Bryars at 80: Stringworks throughout the next few months. More information about the ensemble can be found at their website.

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Thank you for reading the 105th issue of Tone Glow. See you on the field.

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